---
title: But the fish said, ‘Pray let me live! — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But the fish said, ‘Pray let me live! Who acts: fish, Pray, me. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Fisherman and His Wife, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Fisherman and His Wife, sentence 3

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But the fish said, ‘Pray let me live!

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**Who acts:** fish, Pray, me · **What happens:** say, let, live · **To what, where:** me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Fisherman and His Wife. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fish, Pray, me), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg2591:11:3
# text = But the fish said, ‘Pray let me live!
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	fish	fish	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	Pray	Pray	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	let	let	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
9	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	live	live	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the fish |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **let** | past | Pray | me |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **live** | infinitive | me *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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